EU to give $1B to help UN agencies deal with refugee crisis

EU nations will give an additional $1.1 billion to UN agencies dealing with the refugee crisis, according to a draft statement from an emergency summit on Wednesday aimed at addressing how to accommodate increasing number of people fleeing conflict and trying to enter Europe. 

According to a draft obtained by the news agency AFP, member states will pledge to "respond to the urgent needs of refugees in the region by helping the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Food Program and other agencies with at least an additional 1 billion euro." Another proposal at the meeting included deploying more personnel to patrol EU borders. 

The development comes as divided EU leaders gathered for another emergency summit a day after ministers forced through a controversial deal to relocate 120,000 refugees despite the objections of a number of eastern states.

The bloc’s leaders are trying to try to adopt a unified approach to the crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands of desperate people stream into Europe from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Ahead of the summit European Union (EU) President Donald Tusk suggested that the numbers have posed a historic challenge that to date the bloc has failed dismally to keep.

European Union President Donald Tusk urged divided EU nations to set aside their differences and work together to hammer out a concrete plan "in place of the arguments and the chaos we have witnessed in the last weeks."

French President Francois Hollande was more blunt.

"Those who don't share our values, those who don't even want to respect those principles, need to start asking themselves questions about their place in the European Union," he said on his way into the meeting.

But agreeing on a cohesive approach to the refugee crisis has eluded EU policymakers for weeks on end, with deep divisions between eastern states who have opposed any compulsory quota system and more wealthy members in the west.

On Tuesday, interior ministers briskly voted through a deal to relocate 120,000 refugees, under which EU countries must take a share of new arrivals from overstretched frontline states, like Greece and Italy.

But in a rare step, it was passed by a majority vote instead of unanimously, with fierce opposition from Eastern European states.

Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia all voted against the plan, while Finland abstained, straining regional ties as Europe wrestles with its biggest migration crisis since World War II.

Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, said the plan was forced through despite opposition because it was an "emergency situation".

"If we had not done this, Europe would have been even more divided," he told a press conference.

With the relocation vote out of the way, Wednesday's emergency EU summit will focus on strengthening the bloc's external borders, as well as giving extra funding to Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and UN agencies.

But there may be trouble ahead as Greece will likely face pressure to accept outside help in managing its borders — renewing sovereignty concerns in Athens just months after it was forced to accept a huge eurozone bailout.

Europe is under increasing pressure over its handling of a huge influx of hundreds of thousand of refugees this year, many of them fleeing conflict and repression in Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea.

The EU's new relocation plans were outlined after pictures of a drowned Syrian refugee toddler lying on a Turkish beach sparked global outrage.

But the proposal has opened fresh rifts in a bloc already reeling from the Greek debt crisis.

Hungary and its eastern partners oppose the plan because they say Brussels has no right to make them take in thousands of people, and to do so amounts to a violation of their national sovereignty.

"Very soon, we will find that the emperor is naked. Commonsense has lost today!" Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec tweeted after the vote.

But marking a softer line Wednesday, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said Wednesday: "Even though I don't like the use of the quotas, I don't agree with them and we voted against them, Europe must not fall apart over solving the migrant crisis."

"That's why I don't want to escalate the tension by challenge it with legal actions.”

But in Bratislava, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico said he was prepared to break the EU's rules rather than accept the proposal.

"I would rather go to an infringement than to accept this diktat," he said, quoted by Slovakia's leading SME daily.

Ahead of Wednesday's meeting, US President Barack Obama pressed European nations to take their "fair share" of refugees.

The statement, which came after a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel Tuesday, is likely to be seen as a warning to those who opposed the deal.

But his call will be diluted by accusations that Washington itself has not done enough to address the crisis, despite being the leading humanitarian donor to the region.

With millions of Syrians forced into camps across the Middle East, tens of thousands crossing Europe on foot and hundreds washing up dead on beaches, the US has promised to take in only 10,000 as refugees next year — a figure dwarfed by the up to one million Syrian refugees Germany is expecting to take in this year alone.

The crisis has also raised fears that the EU's cherished Schengen passport-free zone could collapse as countries close their borders to stem the flow of refugees, many of whom are heading for Germany.

Britain, which has exercised its right to opt out of the relocation plan, on Tuesday confirmed the arrival of the first tranche of 20,000 refugees it is taking in over five years from refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.

On Wednesday, British Prime Minister David Cameron indicated he wanted EU countries to deport more so-called economic migrants as they are asked to take in more refugees.

Cameron met French President Francois Hollande late Tuesday, and Cameron's office says they "agreed that EU countries should do more to return migrants who don't have a genuine claim for asylum to their countries of origin."

Wire services